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SLATEBy Christopher Hitchens

Posted Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2005, at 12:35PM ET

Bah, HumbugThe horrors of December in a one-party state.

I used to harbor the quiet but fierceambition to write just one definitive,

annihilating anti-Christmas column and

then find an editor sufficiently indulgentto run it every December. My model was

the Thanksgiving pastiche knocked off

by Art Buchwald several decades ago andrecycled annually in a serious ongoing

test of reader tolerance. But I have slowly

come to appreciate that this hope was in

vain. The thing must be done annuallyand afresh. Partly this is because the

whole business becomes more vile and

insufferableand in new and worsewaysevery 12 months. It also starts to

kick in earlier each year: It was at

Thanksgiving this year that, making myway through an airport, I was confronted

by the leering and antlered visage of

what to my disordered senses appeared

to be a bloody great moose. Only as

reason regained her throne did I realizethat the reindeerthat plague species

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were back.

Not long after I'd swallowed this bitterpill, I was invited onto Scarborough

Country on MSNBC to debate the

proposition that reindeer were an ancientsymbol of Christianity and thus

deserving of First Amendment protection,

if not indeed of mandatory display atevery mall in the land. I am told thatnobody watches that show anymore

certainly I heard from almost nobody

who had seen itso I must tell you thatthe view taken by the host was that

coniferous trees were also a symbol of

Christianity, and that the FoundingFathers had endorsed this proposition.

From his cue cards, he even quoted a few

vaguely deistic sentences from BenjaminFranklin and George Washington, neither

of them remotely Christian in tone. When

I pointed out the latter, and added thatChristmas trees, yule logs, and all the

rest were symbols of the winter solstice"holidays" before any birth had been

registered in the greater Bethlehem area, I

was greeted by a storm of abuse, as if Ihad broken into the studio instead of

having been entreated to come by

Scarborough's increasingly desperate

staff. And when I added that it wasn'tvery Tiny Tim-like to invite a seasonal

guest and then tell him to shut up, I was

told that I was henceforth stricken fromthe Scarborough Rolodex. The ultimate

threat: no room at the Bigmouth Inn.

This was a useful demonstration of whatI have always hated about the month of

December: the atmosphere of a one-partystate. On all media and in all

newspapers, endless invocations of the

same repetitive theme. In all public

places, from train stations to departmentstores, an insistent din of identical

propaganda and identical music. The

collectivization of gaiety and thecompulsory infliction of joy. Time wasted

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on foolishness at one's children's schools.

Vapid ecumenical messages from the

president, who has more pressing thingsto do and who is constitutionally

required to avoid any religious

endorsements.

More holiday cartoons

Our Christian enthusiasts are evidently

too stupid, as well as too insecure, to

appreciate this. A revealing mark of theirinsecurity is their rage when public

places are not annually given over to

religious symbolism, and now, their fresh

rage when palaces of privateconsumption do not follow suit. The Fox

News campaign against Wal-Mart and

other outletswhose observance of theofficial feast-day is otherwise fanatical

and punctilious to a degree, but a degree

that falls short of unswervingorthodoxyis one of the most sinister as

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well as one of the most laughable

campaigns on record. If these dolts knew

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anything about the real Protestant

tradition, they would know that it was

exactly this paganism and corruptionthat led Oliver Cromwellmy own

favorite Protestant fundamentalistto

ban the celebration of Christmasaltogether.

No believer in the First Amendment couldgo that far. But there are millions ofwell-appointed buildings all across the

United States, most of them tax-exempt

and some of them receiving statesubventions, where anyone can go at any

time and celebrate miraculous births and

pregnant virgins all day and all night ifthey so desire. These places are known as

"churches," and they can also force

passersby to look at the displays and

billboards they erect and to give ear tothe bells that they ring. In addition, they

can count on numberless radio and TV

stations to beam their stuff all throughthe ether. If this is not sufficient, then

god damn them. God damn them

everyone.

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